Exercise 7 Conveying character

Patti Smith - American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist. Medium - acrylic.
A black and white photo - the front page of a magazine, was my only reference for this portrait, albeit a good quality one. After a tonal sketch, did a few colour studies with colour test pieces, to try out various combinations. The reference photo contained a lot of dramatic light and shadow, so I decided to try and convey this atmosphere with unrealistic, perhaps moody colours. A portrait by Oskar Kokoschka - of Adolf Loos was also instrumental in influencing my decisions, both colourwise and the nature of the paint application. http://uploads2.wikipaintings.org/images/oskar-kokoschka/adolf-loos-1909.jpg!Large.jpg
The hair was put in as a loose drippy wash in cyan and black on a cyan background - I wanted to capture the effect of wild unruly hair. It was later strengthened and deepened with darker thicker paint in various colours.

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3 finished

Three stages of the painting.










Throughout the whole painting I used a combination of thick and thin paint, opaque and transparent. For instance I added glazes to soften some areas and opaque paint on mostly the light toned areas, particularly the nose tip, the cheeks, centre of lower lip and chin. Also to intensify the dark areas.
Technical problems: because of the hot dry weather at the time the paint was drying too fast, despite using a staywet palette. Adding  retarder was a huge help to both the paint on the palette  and on the canvas. Bristle brushes seemed to be relatively unresponsive on this occasion, in comparison to when I tried synthetic ones. Again it took ages, repeatedly adjusting and re-adjusting the tones before I was reasonable happy it was finished. Being able  to tell when it was finished was easy, unlike certain others.

The finished painting portrays an element of firm determination in the subject's character, reflected in the expression - the upturned mouth, the gaze and the dark piercing eyes  . I think it also conveys presence as the head is fairly close-up to the frame, maybe a rather ghostly presence. I think the colours and tones I used still retain much of the drama of the photograph. The above elements combine to make it the most successful portrait of the exercises so far - in my opinion. The previous portrait is a close second (see Mood and Atmosphere).